Austria!All of the countries I had been to on the trip up until this point had not been the first visit. This changed in Austria. This makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things, as Austria is similar to Germany and the next countries, Slovakia and Hungary, are fairly similar to the Czech Republic. Anyway, things were going well. The sun was shining and the birds were singing. It was neither too hot, nor too cold. I found a place to camp in a town called Brunn an der Wild. It was in close proximity to houses and there were people walking dogs, but I was tired and everyone seemed friendly enough. Great night's sleep. The next morning I set off for Vienna and before things went uphill, then went downhill. What I mean by that is that I got one of the "no cycling on the highway" signs near Maissau, then I went up a hill, then I went down a hill. I still wasn't allowed on the highway. This was a reasonably big spanner to my plans. There were often roads which were vaguely along the highway between small towns, but they often didn't meet up, or meant that I needed to take a massive detour. The major problem was one of navigation, because I didn't want to use all my internet loading maps in great detail. Eventually I just went on the highway for a bit then there was a cycle path nearby which seemed to be going in the right direction. After Stockerau, the bike path went along the river, so I followed it. Entering the city that way was pretty beautiful. I successfully went to the wrong address, which was on the other side of town to where my host lived. What a day! Fortunately when I arrived, my host was super understanding of all the things. Again, I haven't put in a lot of my photos from Vienna, because better ones can be found using Google. Also, Vienna is where it started to get seriously HOT for me. Like, over 30 degrees pretty much every day. From Vienna I went to Bratislava, then on to Budapest. In Bratislava I met two Swedish fellas doing a trip from their home to Tunisia. They had much less stuff than I did. Instead of tent, sleeping mat and sleeping bag, they just had sleeping hammocks. These take up much less space. Also they were going pretty raw with clothing compared with me. I'm currently on the brink of posting a bunch of stuff to somewhere later in the trip. I needed the cold weather stuff at the start, but I can't see myself using my awesome sleeping bag as anything but a pillow over the next two months. Fortunately, my sunglasses broke, so I didn't need to carry them any more. Unfortunately, I needed a new pair of sunglasses, which I bought from a petrol station. Also in the hostel I stayed at in Bratislava, I met two Romanian people who were studying in Edinburgh. The girl had an angelic voice which I could have listened to for all eternity. Unfortunately, the words she was saying went along the lines of "oh yeah, there are heaps of bears in Romania". After Bratislava I had either 280km along the cycling path on the Danube or 190km on the road. I chose the road. I've seen enough river for the moment and I wanted to get to Budapest in two days. The road in Austria to the border was amazing. Nearly a full metre on the side of the road for me to ride on and not much traffic. Across the border I chose to take back roads to start with, thinking I might find somewhere to camp. As it transpired, I got to a place called Tata which had a lake. I also first noticed here that there is a lot of unprotected WiFi. A dream for the traveller. I cycled around the lake and eventually found a plausibly rough path to follow. Lo and behold at the end of the path there was a hut and a Hungarian family cooking up some Hungarian sausage on a campfire. They spoke reasonable english and weren't staying there the night (they lived nearby). After a shared dinner, they recommend a place which I could camp and headed off. After ploughing my way through hundreds of tiny frogs and swarms of mosquitoes, I pitched tent and had a good sleep. The next morning I hit the lake for a quick swim then mowed my delicious breakfast of a salami, cheese and tomato roll in to oblivion. The ride from there to Budapest had similar setbacks in terms of not being allowed on some of the highways, but alternate routes were a'plenty. My host in Budapest was a little older than the other ones. Laszlo is 61 and the worst thing about him was that instead of seeing Budapest, I just wanted to stay and listen to him talk. His opinions were nothing if not different to what I had heard before. As it transpired, we cooked together, at together (along with two Turkish lads staying there also) and just generally chatted. The next day I was in for a surprise. Shakes was in town for just half a day so we caught up for brunch (best meal of the day). It was good to see him, having not caught up for years. Afterwards, I went to Margrit Island which is a thing to do apparently. It was quite pretty and I cycled around a bit then found somewhere to read. By this time, my petrol station sunnies had broken, so I needed to find another pair. Cycling without sunnies is basically not an option. Laszlo warned me about an imminent thunderstorm, so I rushed to the top of a hill to watch it come in, and get some photos of the city. This all went to plan until the thunderstorm hit with fury and I had to find cover. While I was under the cover I met an English guy who was travelling with his family before heading up to Edinburgh for two years of work in a hospital. That night, Laszlo and I stayed up until midnight to watch the highlights of the weekend of AFL. Further east people didn't know much about it, but here they have games on the sports channels fairly regularly. My next stop from Budapest was Timisoara. This would mean leaving the Schengen zone. The first day again was marred slightly by not being allowed on the highway. The response of the roads department to the increase in the popularity of cycling, was to slap up a "no cycling" sign on every road that went somewhere useful. After a bit of navigating I made it to Kecskemet and went a little beyond the town on a fairly rough road. Google told me the walking directions to Timisoara were along this road so I thought I'd check it out. In a way it was good that I did because I found a great place to sleep for ten hours which had me feeling amazing the next day. Unfortunately, it was not a road I could take all the way there because it was incredibly bumpy and not paved. After that there were a few back roads I could take which didn't add too much to the total distance. On one of these roads I passed through a small town called Bokros. As I entered the town, there were a class of school kids waiting to cross the road, aged about 12. They were significant because one of them was holding a makeshift cricket bat and another, a tennis ball. Who would have thought that a school in a small town in Hungary would have their kids playing cricket! I made it to the Romanian border before nightfall. This is something I wanted to do because I'm only supposed to be in the Schengen Zone for a maximum of 90 days in any 180 day period. I feel like this is a rule I will need to break, which is an issue for later on but if I could get an extra day on my side, I would. At the border, the people were amazed at what I was doing. A German couple who were also crossing (in their car) gave me water and tic-tacs and had grave looks on their faces. They said to stay on the very edge of the road, sometimes even off the road or I would be hit. As it transpires, drivers here so far have been really good, and most of the roads are too. Across The BorderI didn't know what I was to expect when I crossed in to Romania. The first building I saw was a petrol station. There is a stereotype that Romanians are gypsies. From one look at the clientele of the servo, this stereotype seemed to be accurate. I jumped on the free WiFi in the hope that I would find a likely place to camp. It was starting to get dark and it looked like rain was on the way. The general lay of the land was not conducive to camping. The roads were bordered by farmland upon which I couldn't really camp, even if I could get there. There were fairly deep culverts between the road and the crops which were impassable on my heavy bike. The first town I reached, Cenad, had a few nice looking places and a whole bunch of stray dogs. Not ideal. I carried on a bit for a few towns, but there was no real wilderness to camp in. It was like being in Germany again. Eventually it was too dark to safely continue along the road, so just past Sannicolau Mare I took a right hoping that I could hide my tent somewhere. I dog bark and I was spotted. I walked my bike along the path (it was very bumpy) until I got to a little house with a man outside. I made all the requisite movements to show that I had a tent and wanted to camp (there was plenty of space) and he responded with what loosely translates to "piss off". As I wandered back towards the highway I spied a shepherd filling up a trough for his sheep.
The rest of this story is in the "Feathers In My Cap" section.
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Chris JonesJust a guy going for a bit of a documented ride. Archives
May 2018
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